诸子的由来The Origin of the Schools

In the last chapter I said that Confucianism 儒家and Taoism道家 are the two main streams of Chinese thought.    They became so two main streams of Chinese thought only after a long evolution, however, and from the fifth through the third centuries B.C.公园前3到5世纪 they were only two among many other rival schools of thought. During that period the number of schools was so great that the Chinese referred to them as the "hundred schools." Ssu-ma T'an司马谈 and the Six Schools Later historians have attempted to make a classification of these "hundred schools". The first to do so was Ssu-ma T'an (died 110 B.C.), father of Ssu-ma Ch'ien (145-ca. 86 B.C.), 司马迁and the author with him of China's first great dynastic history, the Shih Chi or Historical Records. 史记In the last chapter of this work Ssu-ma Ch'ien quotes an essay by his father, titled"On the Essential Ideas of the Six Schools."六个学派 In this essay Ssu-ma T'an classifies the philosophers of the preceding several centuries into six major schools, as follows: The first is the Yin-Yang chia or Yin-Yang school, 阴阳家which is one of cosmologists.It derives its name from the Yin and Yang principles, which in Chinese thought are regarded as the two major principles of Chinese cosmology, Yin being the female principle, and Yang the male principle, the combination and interaction of which is believed by the Chinese to result in all universal phenomena. The second school is the Ju chia or School of Literati儒家学派This school is known in Western literature as the Confucianist school（孔家思想）